In the studio / На студии

As I write this, I am already back in the U.S. For the last month in Krasnoyarsk, I couldn’t get into my WordPress account to write new blog posts. Now I can, apparently, since I’m back.

The Saturday and Sunday before I left, the 16th and 17th of June, I was in a legitimate recording studio, working on my first-ever song! Although Max wanted to do the project, he had a difficult time finding inspiration and so he asked our friend Roma to help us. Roma agreed and wrote the melody and laid out the basic instrumentals. I wrote the lyrics and soon I found myself, headphones on, before a microphone in a professional recording studio where a friend of Roma’s works.

Let me say this…zapisaniye — ochen’ trudno! [Recording is very hard!] We had to do multiple takes of each verse and chorus. And it has to be done just right. Perfectionism is necessary when it comes to making music, I think. Thankfully, the sound engineer Zhenya’s girlfriend Yulia was there. She studied at the music academy in Krasnoyarsk (along with Max, Sandu, and a lot of my other Krasnoyarsk friends) and is a vocal teacher. She really made the process a lot easier.

It was such a remarkable experience. The microphone was incredible. When they first played back my voice after the very first take, I was shocked at how clearly I could hear myself. I had never really heard my own voice before, never so clearly.

After 8 hours over the course of two days, we finally came out with the full song. It’s not done yet, but I’ll make sure to post a link when it’s done. I am pleased with the results as they were at the time that I left the studio, but there’s still much editing to do — adding in instrumentals, sound effects, and whatnot.

I’m going to go back to sleep and recover from this jet lag…I have to adjust myself 12 hours back!